By W. George Krasnow, former professor of Monterey Institute ofInternational Studies and now president of Russian American GoodwillAssociates. He is the author of: Vladislav Krasnov, Solzhenitsyn andDostoevsky (University of Georgia Press).

As Russia celebrates the 80th birthday of her literary giant, the Nobelprize winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, it behooves people in theWest to reflect on the meaning of his enduring message for us.

Didn't he open the eyes of the free world to the evils of Communism? Aresounding Yes, more than any person alive. And he did so at a time whenCommunism held sway over one third of mankind and threatened the rest.

Didn't he strengthen the resolve of the United States and the free worldto resist global Soviet expansion? Yes, on a par with such Americanpatriots as Ronald Reagan. He did it at the time when we needed it most,after the debacle in Vietnam, when Communist ideas were popular among theintellectual establishment here. And the "best and the brightest" of theWest falsely denounced both him and Reagan as "trigger happy ColdWarriors."

Didn't he tell Soviet leaders in 1973 that their political and economicsystem was antiquated, that they should set the captive nations free andstart reforms ¬ for the sake of Russia's own spiritual and physicalhealth? Soviet leaders procrastinated for nearly twenty years, and when,under Gorbachev, they started their reforms, they did so only in the vainhope to save Communism.

Didn't he warn Soviet leaders again, in 1990, that Communism is neitherredeemable nor reformable, that instead of trying to save it they ought tothink about how to protect the people from the falling debris of thecollapsing Soviet Union. They ignored his warning again only to see theSoviet Union collapse the following year.

Of course, he was no lap dog of the "capitalist" West either. He wasnot blind to the defects of the West and at times harshly criticized them.In his 1978 Harvard commencement he railed against crass materialism, theloss of spiritual compass, and the lack of moral courage in the UnitedStates. And, yes, he deplored the tendency to indulge in excessivelitigiousness and hairsplitting legalism. Now the White House is mired inexactly the resultant moral morass.

Well, if Solzhenitsyn was provident so many times, it is hardly anoverstatement to call him a modern prophet. Yet, on the threshold of the3rd millennium the leaders of the two great powers have remained just asdeaf to Solzhenitsyn's warnings as the kings of ancient Israel to Biblicalprophets. But then ¬ one of the two great powers is gone. And bothpresidents face an impeachment.

In 1994 Solzhenitsyn left his house in Cavendish, Vermont, and returnedto Russia with his family, exactly as he predicted he would (when hepredicted this in 1974, leading American sovietologists ridiculed him as asenile old man out of his wits). Although writing, not politics, remainshis main mission, he does not insulate himself from the life of ordinaryRussians. In the past four years he traveled to 26 Russian regions,visited dozens of cities, and was a guest of honor at over a hundred townhall meetings. He keeps notes of what people tell him.

What is his verdict on a new post-Communist Russia? "After all thosesuperficial changes of flags [from a red to tricolor], coat of arms andslogans, the current regime has not rid itself of the chief trait of itsCommunist predecessors: their total isolation from people and total lackof accountability. [For,] all the democratic appurtenances are being usedto cover up for the greedy oligarchy [that rules the country] and todeceive world public opinion." He made the conclusion in his latest bookappropriately entitled Russia in Collapse (Rossia v obvale). Not only isthe title appropriate, but the timing was on a cue. The book came out lastMay when the financial crisis began to unravel.

Solzhenitsyn is dismayed at how wrongheaded the "reforms" have been andhow much destruction and misery they have left in their wake. Bear in mindthat Solzhenitsyn has been committed to the notions of private propertyand free enterprise for a long while. He is convinced, however, that thereforms advanced neither. They advanced only crime and corruption. He isappalled at the way the "reforms" were carried out. According to him,privatization was more like a grand theft of public property, and thereformers behaved more like neo-Bolsheviks and Stalinists than liberaldemocrats as they are known in the West. For, they pursued their reforms"with the same reckless madness and devastating haste, as thenationalization in 1917-1918 [by the Bolsheviks] and the collectivizationof farms [by Stalin] in 1930."

And the results? The results are clearly visible in the rule of theoligarchs, especially the Big Seven that control the banks, the media,and, often, the executive branch. According to Solzhenitsyn, Berezovskyboasted that they cast lots for cabinet posts.

What is at stake? Not only whether Russia will be a free-marketdemocratic country. Not only whether it could safely manage its nucleararsenal. At stake is the very survival of the Russian sovereign state andof the Russian nation as a contributor to global "cultural biodiversity." It has been reported that, as part of his 80th birthday celebration,Solzhenitsyn snubbed President Yeltsin by refusing to accept Russia'shighest honor, the order of St. Andrew the Apostle. "I cannot accept anaward from the supreme authority which brought Russia to its currentdisastrous state," he said, holding the Yeltsin government responsible forthe current misery of the nation.

In view of the extraordinary contribution Solzhenitsyn made to the freeworld and especially to this country, one wonders whether the White Housesent him a birthday greeting. If it did, one wants to see its full text.In my humble opinion, Solzhenitsyn deserves the highest award of thisland, the Congressional Medal of Honor. But then one is also afraid thathe might snub it as harshly. After all, President Clinton's policy ofexclusive sponsorship of the failed course of Russian reforms hassurprisingly enjoyed a bipartisan Congressional support, every law makertoeing nicely the two-party line. And who wants to be snubbed by thestubborn Russian prophet?

Published at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Diplo&month=9812&week=c&msg=6%2B%2F9l%2BxDeL9ELujzuy1YkA&user=&pw=